A Promise Fulfilled
by Lynse
Summary: A promise is a promise, and promises are meant to be kept, if at all possible. And it's high time that the Doctor made good on that promise he made to Lucas a while back... A short follow up of Traces.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: All right, so it's _another_ little follow up story, but I thought I might as well wrap things up. For the _seaQuest_ crew, it immediately follows _Splashdown_. Amy, Rory, and the Doctor are somewhere between _The Vampires of Venice_ and _The Hungry Earth_. Standard disclaimers apply.

Quick comment: this first chapter is more Doctor Who-focussed, while the last one will be more _seaQuest_-focussed. And I welcome tips writing any of the characters, since these aren't the ones with which I'm the most comfortable.

* * *

><p>An alarm started sounding in the TARDIS. That wasn't the worst part, actually. It was just that the Doctor couldn't remember which alarm it was or what it was for. He and Amy and Rory weren't heading anywhere in particular at the moment. They were, in fact, just drifting in space, and an empty part of it at that. Not so much as a piece of space junk in sight. Well, nothing when he'd last checked the scanner, at least. But the point still stood that there was no logical reason for any of the really pressing alarms to go off, as nothing was going to crash into them, the TARDIS hadn't suddenly lost power or been pulled somewhere against her will, they weren't anywhere where someone who had a grudge against him could find them…. That sort of thing.<p>

The eggs weren't done, either, so it wasn't that.

Amy Pond burst into the console room, followed by her fiancé, Rory Williams. Neither looked impressed. It probably wasn't just because of the alarm. The two had reminded him, quite plainly, that they needed more sleep than he did, and they just wanted to catch up on some. Personally, he hoped that that was all they had been doing, since, once they'd drawn his attention to it, he realized that they really did look like they needed rest, but…. "What's up with the sirens?" Amy asked, her hands pressed over her ears.

That was the bad part. It was never good to admit to his companions that he didn't know what was going on. It didn't look good to be forgetful, and it gave them something else to use against him the next time he was trying to win an argument and played the higher species card.

"And can you turn it off?" Amy added. "My ears are starting to ring."

"She wouldn't wear the earplugs I found," Rory added.

The Doctor spared them a glance before turning back to the mishmash of the TARDIS controls in front of him. He still didn't know what half of them did. Not that that was too surprising; he'd never entirely worked out all of the uses of every control with the coral theme, either, but now that she'd remodelled herself…. Why couldn't the blue switches have just stayed blue switches? Or had they, and just been moved next to the red switches? Well, either way, he definitely wasn't going to admit that there was even the slightest possibility that River Song knew the layout of his TARDIS better than he did. He reached out and threw a green switch.

Nothing happened.

He looked up at Amy and Rory again. "It'll be a minute; she's a bit temperamental."

He received two identical looks telling him, quite plainly, that he was full of it. Amy was clearly rubbing off on Rory, though he supposed he shouldn't have expected any less. Still, he would've hoped that the pure astonishment of travelling in time and space would've lasted a little longer. They always got much more argumentative once they realized he was fallible. Granted, that usually didn't take very long…. The Doctor sighed and brought the screen around to look at it again. He typed a few things in, checking the history, and—

Oh.

Right.

That alarm.

He remembered setting that now. But, really, he had a very good excuse for not remembering it earlier. He'd been busy when he'd set it. And, when he'd looked into things, he had known that then was not the time to do anything. He only had one shot at this, and he wanted to make it a good one. So, he'd set himself a reminder.

And now the time was ripe, the circumstances all set for the picking.

The Doctor jiggled a stick, threw a different lever, and hit a couple buttons. This time, the alarm fell silent.

"Took you long enough," Amy said, finally pulling her hands away from her ears as Rory pocketed his earplugs. "So, what was that for, anyway?"

"Hang on," was all the Doctor said in reply. The TARDIS had the coordinates, and she'd even displayed them on the screen for him. She knew what he wanted; she was just letting him make that final choice. She was giving him a chance to get ready, to decide to go.

The Doctor set her in motion without checking to see if his companions had heeded his warning.

From the cries and the thuds, he assumed they hadn't.

"Okay, that really hurt that time," Rory said as the TARDIS shuddered to a stop. He paused just long enough to help Amy up from the floor before resuming rubbing his arm.

"Yeah, I'd appreciate a little more warning," Amy said, massaging her leg. "So what was the alarm for? Where are we?"

The Doctor didn't answer her. "Amy, stay here," he ordered. "Rory, I'll need your help, so you come with me." Amy opened her mouth, and the Doctor cut her off, adding, "We'll be two minutes. Less, if we can. You are _not_ to move a muscle, Pond."

Amy crossed her arms defiantly. "And why's that?"

"Because I said so," the Doctor retorted.

"Um, Doctor," Rory said, perhaps seeing more in Amy's deadly glare than he was, "maybe we should let her—"

"No. She's staying here."

"At least tell me where we are," Amy said. "Tell me what I'm missing, what I can't see."

"It doesn't matter. We're not here to see anything."

"Then why are we here?" Amy demanded.

"Because I made a promise to a friend a lifetime ago," the Doctor snapped, in no mood to delay things because he knew how short their time was now that they'd arrived, "and I mean to make good on that without you getting hurt."

There was a brief silence before Rory said, "And you're fine if _I_ get hurt?"

The Doctor snorted. "Of course not. You're travelling with me. I take care of the people I travel with. I just need your help for the simple reason that I can't carry two people by myself, nor can I take one and make sure you get the right other one while making sure your fiancée doesn't get into any trouble."

"I don't get into any more trouble than you do," Amy said indignantly. "I probably get into _less_."

"I'm not taking any chances, so there's no point in arguing." Amy opened her mouth again, so the Doctor cut across her, saying, "There's a war on out there, Amelia Pond, and I am not taking you into the middle of it."

"So you're taking _Rory_?" Amy asked incredulously.

"Again," Rory said, "it's sounding like you're fine if I get hurt."

The Doctor sighed. "Rory, you're a nurse, and we're about to step out onto a battlefield to nab two of the victims before they get killed. I have to trust that you'll have enough of a head on your shoulders not to get caught in the crossfire, but I know that you'll know enough to make sure we can move these people without injuring them further. You," he added, looking over at Amy, "don't have that knowledge."

Amy huffed but didn't argue. "Fine. I'll stay in here. But can you at least tell me where we are?"

"I'll explain after," the Doctor said. "I don't have time now. Come on, Rory," he added, starting down the ramp.

"But, um, Doctor," Rory said, running to catch up to him, "I don't know who I'm looking for."

"I'll point her out," the Doctor said. He paused at the door. "Don't do anything stupid. No drawing attention to yourself, no sticking around to see what's going on, no talking to anyone. I'm trusting you. You're just going to grab Wendy Smith and run back here. Understand?"

Rory looked uncertain, but he nodded anyway. The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment, composing himself, remembering what he'd promised Lucas Wolenczak and all the research he'd done when he'd been looking into things to see if he could ever make good on that promise. He had a chance to do it now. One chance. One chance, two lives, and a promise fulfilled….

The Doctor glanced back at Amy, who was still sulking by the console, nodded to Rory, threw the door to the TARDIS open, and stepped outside.

* * *

><p>Rory was hit by a wave of sound when he stepped out. The gunfire, or the equivalent, was the most prevalent. Judging by the green and yellow and white flashes of light he could see, he was guessing laser guns. But over the sounds of the shooting, he could hear the cries of the fighters and the screams of the injured. <em>"There're too many of them!" <em>

He shot a nervous look at the Doctor, who put his finger to his lips and pointed ahead of them with his other hand.

"Um, Doctor—"

"We're near the ship's power core," the Doctor said in a low voice, "and it's been rigged with explosive charges that are about to go off."

"_What_?"

"Just be quick. I don't fancy sticking around for the explosion." The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and turned it on to get some sort of reading, but Rory couldn't even hear its familiar whine over the ruckus. Pocketing the device again, the Doctor grabbed his arm and dragged him to the right, down a narrow corridor. "We're going to come out beside them," he said quietly. He put his finger to his lips once more, then slowly crept ahead.

Rory had no choice but to follow.

It was darker than he would have liked, even considering the flashes from the lasers that lit everything up. It was creepy, and creepier because it was real and dangerous. The people cowered behind barrels and tanks, trying to treat their injured or recharge their weapons for another round of fighting against the…things that were attacking them, things that looked a lot more alien than the Doctor did.

Rory felt a poke when the Doctor prodded him to get his attention, and he pointed to a woman who was bent over a man who was currently moaning in pain. "Her," the Doctor mouthed. Or perhaps he actually said it; Rory couldn't tell.

"What about him?" Rory asked, pointing to the injured man.

The Doctor shook his head, and when Rory opened his mouth again, he received a very clear 'don't argue' look, so he shut his mouth and nodded.

The woman might not be injured yet, but Rory had a feeling that her luck wasn't going to last very long. He just hoped that his would.

The Doctor caught his eye again. He held up three fingers, then two, then—

"What, now?" Rory asked, but his words were lost as one of the tanks in the room in front of him exploded when one of the lasers hit it in a weak spot. Rory blinked, but the Doctor was gone, and he figured he'd better get moving, too. Besides, the floor was shaking, and that probably wasn't a good sign.

He stumbled ahead, trying to keep his head down, and grabbed the shoulders of the woman. She was unconscious now, as was the man she'd been tending. She was probably a doctor, or at least someone who knew first aid. It looked like she'd been trying to put pressure on the man's wounds.

Rory took a deep breath. "I've got to focus," he muttered, and he quickly checked the woman over. He knew he needed to move. He knew he didn't have much time. But he had to be sure.

"Rory, come on!"

Rory looked up and his mouth dropped open. "What are you doing here?" Rory hissed as Amy grabbed the woman's feet. "The Doctor told you to stay in the TARDIS!"

"No time to talk, remember?" Amy said. Rory shut his mouth, and together they lifted the woman and started back to the TARDIS as quickly as they dared. "Besides," Amy added as they approached the safety of the Doctor's ship, "you didn't _really_ think I was going to stay out of this, did you?"

"I could hope," Rory muttered, but he was smiling. That was his Amy.

"I left the door open," Amy said as she nudged it open with her foot. "Didn't want the Doctor to have to find his key. Where is he, anyway?"

"I don't know," Rory replied. "He went to grab the other guy, I guess. I lost sight of him." He bent over the woman again. After a moment, he said, "I don't know what they hit her with. I don't even know if it was the aliens or the explosion. I think she's stable, though."

"Good." Amy looked towards the TARDIS door again. "Where is he?" she hissed.

"He's coming," Rory said. "It's fine. He'll be fine. Don't worry." He didn't want to think about what it meant if the Doctor wasn't fine. He was their only way home. He was the only one who knew where they were. And when they were, for that matter.

"He better be," Amy muttered darkly. "If he's not, I'll kill him."

"Here, Amy, you keep her head elevated," Rory said. "I'll go look for the Doctor." Amy frowned, and Rory added, "He probably just needs a hand, and he wanted you to stay here, remember?"

"Fine." Amy traded places with Rory, and he stepped back outside the TARDIS.

There was no sign of the Doctor.

Deciding that he'd rather venture off again than face Amy's wrath, Rory hesitantly started down the corridor again.

He nearly ran into the Doctor as he turned the corner. "Where were you?" Rory asked. Then, noticing that the Doctor was half-carrying, half-dragging two men, he said, "I thought we were only grabbing two people."

"I lied," the Doctor said. "Help me, would you? We have about thirty seconds to get inside the TARDIS."

"Thirty—?"

"Closer to twenty-seven and a half, now," the Doctor added as Rory picked up one of the men. "Now, _run_!"

Rory ran. Or, at least, he ran as best he could when carrying a deadweight, which meant he was really stumbling after the Doctor, but he made it to the TARDIS without tripping, so that was a feat in itself. The Doctor pushed the door shut behind him, raced up to the console, jumping over the woman Amy was sitting with in the process, and threw a lever.

The TARDIS jolted into motion, but the flight settled out and became remarkably smooth. Rory, remembering all the times he had seen the Doctor stroking the TARDIS and talking to her, couldn't help but wonder if his ship had somehow actually known about the delicate state of her passengers.

Of course, if that were the case, the TARDIS probably didn't like them, judging by how they were always thrown about. Unless that was her way of showing that she did like them, but…. Rory shook his head. He wasn't going to think about it. He knelt down and starting checking the men over.

"Are you going to explain now?" Amy asked. "Are you going to tell us what that was all about?"

"And why there are three of them?" Rory added, looking up.

The Doctor stepped back from the console and slumped against the railing. "It's a long story."

Amy crossed her arms. "Do we look like we're going anywhere?"

"That was Hyperion," the Doctor said. "It was in the middle of a civil war. Those aliens you saw, Rory, were Stormers, their fighters. Nasty things; don't want to meet them in a dark alley. Or anywhere else, for that matter."

"So? Who won?" Amy asked.

"It was a war, Pond," the Doctor replied quietly. "No one wins in a war." He stopped for a moment before continuing, saying, "But, since the KrayTak overlords didn't succeed in drawing a comet towards the planet, the rebels had their way."

"And these people are some of the rebels?" Rory guessed.

The Doctor shook his head. "The rebels won because of them, but they weren't rebels. They were just recruited to the cause without their knowledge and, initially, against their will, torn from Earth and dropped into the middle of a war on an alien planet. They weren't given a choice, not at first. They chose to help in the end because they didn't have a real choice. These people," he added, "are the ones who weren't accounted for out of that group, when the rest of them turn up on Earth ten years after they left it."

"Okay," Amy said, "so who've we got?"

"Dr. Wendy Smith," the Doctor replied, nodding at the woman Amy was watching, "Sensor Chief Miguel Ortiz, and Commander Scott Keller." He pointed to the older man, adding, "Scott Keller was the one I forgot about. He's not part of the _seaQuest_ crew like the other two. I didn't know he'd be here, but I suppose I shouldn't've expected anything else. He disappeared off the records on Earth a bit before the _seaQuest_ crew was taken."

"Right." Rory knew that look on Amy's face, and he suspected why it was there: the Doctor had admitted to forgetting something, and Amy was squirreling that bit of information away for later use. "So what's the _seaQuest_?"

"One of the greatest undersea vessels you two will see in your lifetime," the Doctor answered. Turning his attention to Rory, the Doctor asked, "How do they look?"

"Well," Rory said, "considering the circumstances, they're a lot better than they would have been."

"They would have been dead if we'd left them," the Doctor pointed out. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and proceeded to scan the three they'd rescued. Rory sighed; he should've just given the Doctor a straight answer, but the truth was, he couldn't really tell. He wasn't exactly well-versed on injuries incurred by laser guns, assuming the injuries were even caused by laser guns in the first place.

"They're stable," the Doctor announced after a moment, "but we'd better take them to the sick bay for the time being."

Rory blinked at him. "You have a sick bay?"

The Doctor shot him a withering look, the one which accompanied that arrogant look he wore whenever he thought Rory had asked a stupid question. "Of _course_ I have a sick bay! Do you think that, in all the years I've been travelling, no one in this ship has ever gotten ill or injured? Use your head, Rory Williams."

"Don't mind him," Amy advised quietly. "He's just in one of his moods." Louder, she said, "So you know where to find the sick bay, right? Because I still have not found the swimming pool, and you told me it hadn't moved from the library."

"It hasn't," the Doctor replied quickly. Then, slowly, "At least, I don't think it has. Which library were you in?"

"Never mind that," Amy said. "Sick bay. Where is it?"

"Next to the wardrobe room, of course."

"Yeah, last I checked, the wardrobe room was surrounded by storage rooms."

"Maybe it was," the Doctor conceded, "but it's not now, because we need the sick bay, and we need it close."

"But the wardrobe room isn't exactly close," Rory said, remembering how long it had taken him to get there the first few times.

"It is now," the Doctor said.

"Doesn't anything stay where it's supposed to be?" Amy asked.

The Doctor looked surprised. "Where's your sense of adventure? It wouldn't be any fun if things stayed put." But then he seemed to remember the situation at hand, and his light mood vanished as quickly as it had come. "Come on. We'd best move them now. Can you handle Wendy by yourself, Amy?"

Amy, to Rory's surprise, nodded, and in much less time than he would have expected, the three people they had rescued were lying in the sick bay, and the Doctor was tending to his patients.

"You know," Rory said quietly to Amy, "I didn't think he actually knew much about this stuff."

"He knows lots about everything," was Amy's response. "Probably has a degree in glass blowing and cake decorating, too." She glanced over at him. "Can you do anything to help?"

Rory looked over the various bits of equipment in the room and slowly shook his head. "I'd be helping already if I could. I don't recognize enough of what's in here to be able to use any of it."

"Well, he'll probably be busy for a while, then," Amy said. "He shouldn't notice if we slip off for a bit."

Rory smiled. That was his Amy. He got to his feet and offered her a hand up, and they went off in search of a more secluded section of the TARDIS.


	2. Chapter 2

The moment Dr. Wendy Smith woke up, she knew something wasn't right. It wasn't necessarily _wrong_, but neither was it wholly right. And, to make matters even more confusing, she had a strange prickling in the back of her mind that refused to go away, and she couldn't figure out what it was or why it was there.

She opened her eyes.

She didn't recognize this place, wherever she was, but that shouldn't be too surprising. After getting dragged from Earth's oceans to another planet and thrust into the middle of a war, not very many things should be too surprising. But for all that she wasn't on Earth, the room she was in didn't, from what she could see of it, at all resemble the structure of the ones she had seen on Hyperion. And it didn't…feel the same. The closest thing she could think of which carried this same sort of feeling was the outer skin of _seaQuest_.

But this wasn't _seaQuest_, and, unless a miracle had happened, this wasn't Earth, either. She had to be somewhere on Hyperion. But the last thing she could remember….

After a quick mental assessment, she figured she couldn't be injured too badly. Sitting up, she got a better look at her new surroundings. It looked…. Well, it was hard to say for sure, given what must be alien equipment, but it _looked_ like a medical facility. And she wasn't the only one who had ended up here; she could see Ortiz and Keller on two other beds in the room.

Of course, there only were three beds, so it was possible that the others were somewhere else.

It was also possible that they didn't require medical attention.

That didn't bear thinking about. Easing herself off the bed, Wendy went to check on Ortiz and Keller. She didn't know Keller very well, all things considered, but his reputation preceded him. Commander Scott Keller was as respected in his field as Captain Nathan Bridger was in his. Even though she could count the number of times she'd worked with Keller on one hand, she'd trust him with her life, just as she would with Miguel Ortiz.

And the way things were looking, she might very well have to.

Keller and Ortiz, as far as she could tell without any proper medical equipment, were unconscious but stable. They probably looked as good as she had a few minutes ago, before she'd come to. Surely the rest of the away team was all right, kept in a different part of the facility or whatever it was, and surely Lucas and Dagwood had survived, along with those who had been on _seaQuest_ when—

But try as she might, she couldn't feel any of them. True, the most she could usually do was read surface thoughts and bend the odd spoon, but in times of stress, she could sense other things. Usually.

Just not now.

The quiet sound of a door closing caught her attention. She spun around, catching sight of a very human-looking young man. Dark brown hair and eyes, with a bit of a spring in his step, and looking rather like a professor in a tweed jacket and bowtie and seeming horribly out of place as a result. If she was still on Hyperion, then she was looking at another disguise. If not…. If not, she didn't know where she was.

"You're up early," the man announced. "I thought I had at _least_ another five minutes. Sorry. Would've been here earlier if I'd known you were going to heal so quickly. Not that you're completely healed, mind," he added, looking at her sternly, "and you ought to get right back into bed, young lady. I just patched up the worst of it."

Young lady? She was probably older than he was. "Who are you?" Wendy asked. "And where am I?"

"I'm the Doctor," the man replied, "and you're in my sick bay. Now get back into bed if you're going to ask questions, and I know you're going to ask questions, because you always do."

Wendy frowned but did as she was told and perched on the edge of her bed. The Doctor's answers didn't tell her anything, and they didn't tell her what she wanted to know most. "What about everyone else?"

"They'll be all right," he said, his expression softening a bit. "Don't worry. They all made it out in one way or another." His expression took on an amused quirk as he added, "Just as you did."

"When can I see them?"

"You can't." The tone was grim again, carrying a definite note of finality.

"They're not here?" Wendy guessed.

"No, they're not," came the reply, "but that's not the reason why. The reason, Dr. Wendy Smith, is that you dropped off the records in 2022. You and Mr. Ortiz and Commander Keller over there."

Wendy tried to ignore the pit that insisted on forming in her stomach. This man, this Doctor, knew far more than he was saying. It didn't worry her that he knew their names; she could think of a number of ways he could have accessed that information. What worried her was what his words implied: that they'd never see Earth again. She'd known it was a possibility, they all had, but it still….

"So where is everyone else, then?"

"When are you asking about? They're either back on Hyperion or safely on Earth again or somewhere in between, in transit."

That hardly answered her question, but it did tell her something. "We're not on Hyperion?"

"Now? No, I didn't want to risk it. Not exactly safe back there, was it? There was a war on. Granted, you helped end that war, but that doesn't mean the aftermath was much prettier."

"Then where are we? Who are you?"

The man sighed. "I told you, I'm the Doctor. And you're on my ship, in my sick bay, and you're supposed to be recovering. You're a doctor; you should know people ought to rest when they're trying to heal."

"Where are we going, then?"

"Right now, we aren't going anywhere. We're just floating along in a safe bit of space until things get sorted."

"What kinds of things?"

"Oh, all sorts of boring things," the Doctor said, waving it off. "Don't worry about it."

Wendy Smith was in control of her psychic powers. Once she'd learned that control, she didn't read people's thoughts unless she had permission. She needed to remind herself of that now. As much as the Doctor gave her answers to her questions, they weren't satisfying answers, and she had a feeling he knew it.

"I didn't kidnap you, if that's what you're thinking," the Doctor said. He paused, then said, "Well, it wasn't really kidnapping. You'd already been kidnapped. I was just rescuing you."

"Then why just us?" Wendy asked. "Why not everyone else?"

"I didn't need to save everyone else," the Doctor replied quietly. "Everyone else turned up on Earth again, ten years after they left it. Well, ten years for the rest of the planet, at least. But you three…." the Doctor trailed off.

It didn't take much to put the pieces together. "They think we're dead."

"They never found you," the Doctor corrected. "Bear in mind, Dr. Smith, that that _cannot_ change. Bad things happen if things like that change."

"But we're _not_ dead," Wendy said. "You saved us." That much couldn't be denied.

"Yes," the Doctor said. "I did. But, officially, you disappeared. Sometimes disappearance means death, and until I managed to save you, I didn't know it meant otherwise, and neither does anyone else."

"But how can you know that we officially disappeared, that everyone else makes it back to Earth in ten years? How long has it been?"

"For you? Oh, a few hours, give or take a few minutes. Mind you," the Doctor added, checking his watch, "that sedative should be wearing off soon. The others should be up shortly."

That didn't make sense. How could it only be a few hours for her if the Doctor claimed to know what happened to everyone else ten years from now? "What's going on?" Wendy asked.

"I'm making good on my word," the Doctor replied. He jerked his thumb in the direction of Ortiz and Keller. "These two have met me before. I found myself on _seaQuest_ during her first tour. And, I caught up with the crew after the ship was destroyed. I talked to Lucas, and he asked me to promise him something. I did, and now I've carried it out. Well, mostly."

"What did you promise?"

Before the Doctor could answer, however, a moan from Keller got his attention. He looked at his watch. "Bit late," he said, as Ortiz stirred as well, "but better late than never." He went to check on them, grabbing a stethoscope from a tray and— When had that been there? She could've sworn it hadn't been there earlier.

She still hadn't recovered. That was all. And worry was eating away at her. It didn't matter that the Doctor told her not to worry when he hadn't told her why. He'd saved them, yes. He'd taken them away from Hyperion. But he hadn't said what he was going to do with them, or even who he really was, and even though it went against all her principles, she'd tried to get a reading on him and couldn't.

He hadn't shown any sign of it, though. Hadn't blinked an eye. She had no doubt that he would've felt it, but it hadn't seemed to take any concentration on his part to brush her off. She'd run straight into a wall, and she couldn't even tell if he was lying to her or not.

Which meant, of course, that she wasn't sure that her friends were all right after all, and so she was back to worrying.

But, with any luck, Miguel and Scott could give her some of the answers the Doctor wasn't. They, at least, knew who he was. They had an advantage over her. And, maybe, they might even trust the Doctor. They'd know his character, at least. They'd know what sort of person he was. She normally considered herself pretty good at reading people—without using her psychic abilities, of course—but now, well….

"How are you feeling?" was the first question the Doctor asked as the two bleary-eyed men sat up in their beds.

The half-formed answers stopped before they'd fully made it out of either mouth, and both men looked around. They seemed relieved to see her, but she saw no such relief when they looked at the Doctor. As far as she could tell, they had no idea who he was.

That suspicion was confirmed by Ortiz's question, which had been the same as her first one: "Who are you?"

The Doctor smiled and straightened his bowtie. "Yes, didn't expect you to recognize me. I've changed a bit." He beamed at them. "Been a while, hasn't it? I have to admit, I'm rubbish at keeping in touch with people." He stuck out his hand. "Might as well start again. I'm the Doctor."

"But you _can't_—"

"Oh, come on," the Doctor scoffed. "I might not've spent much time with you, but I know you know who I am. You were at that special meeting, and I'm fairly sure Bridger told you the minute I left it. Not to mention that, from what I can tell, you're a good friend of Lucas's, so you probably know what he was up to after I left." He turned to Keller and raised his eyebrows. "Are you going to argue with me, too?"

Keller looked at him for a moment before finally shaking his head.

The Doctor smiled again. "Excellent. Well, that's easy, then. You two can explain to Dr. Smith and say what she missed, and—" He broke off, and looked at Wendy. "Sorry, but do you mind if I use your first name? I've had too many Smiths aboard the TARDIS to just call you 'Dr. Smith'. Granted, the others weren't doctors, but…."

"Wendy's fine," Wendy replied.

"Glad to hear it," the Doctor said. He included the other two in his gaze again and said, "Anyway, you two can fill Wendy in and I'll track down the crew so you can meet them, too."

"You've got a crew now?" Keller asked.

"Well, not _really_. Doubt either of them could do so much as turn the scanner on. I don't think they've been paying that much attention. They're my companions, just friends who are travelling with me. Amy and Rory. Wonderful people. You'll see." And before anyone could ask him anything else, the Doctor had nipped out the door, leaving them alone in the room.

Wendy looked across at the other two. "You'd better start explaining," she said. "I have a feeling this is a long story."

* * *

><p>The story, Ortiz decided, would have sounded a lot crazier if they hadn't just spent time fighting a war on an alien planet. He and Keller told it together, each saying what they knew and both knowing it wasn't the entire story. But then again, they hadn't ever learned the entire story. Captain Bridger had never told him, at least, all the details of what had been going on the first time the Doctor had turned up on <em>seaQuest<em>, and while he had been well aware of Lucas's search and what the boy had turned up, he hadn't thought about it too much.

It was hard to really ignore all the revelations now.

Time travel. Yeah, he'd—sort of—managed to accept that last time, though he couldn't say that knowledge had done much to prepare him for their own travels. Still, it had been the same sort of uneasy acceptance with the whole alien thing, since the Doctor had definitely looked human. Well, he still looked human now, but he looked like a different human, and while that was something that Lucas had mentioned, it had been one of the things Ortiz hadn't paid much attention to at the time.

And they'd all heard Krieg's stories, and Lucas's, of the Doctor's ship. It wasn't much of a leap to figure out that this was it.

But still. It was more unnerving than he'd admit to think that the Doctor was the same person he'd met, albeit briefly, on _seaQuest_. Even after discovering that other alien ship—the Doctor had had a name for the species, but Ortiz couldn't remember it now—he still hadn't entirely accepted that they'd run into an actual, live alien so soon. It wasn't a religious dilemma with him, not like it had been with O'Neill, but it was more just the disbelief that so many crazy things could happen.

It all looked considerably less crazy in light of the events they had been met with on _seaQuest_'s second tour, which had managed to top even the craziest ones of her first tour, but it was still a lot to accept.

From what he understood, though, even with the change in the Doctor's appearance, that was actually what he looked like. There was no illusion like there had been with Tobias or any of the Stormers.

"We've seen a lot of things," Wendy said when they'd finished. "I suppose this shouldn't surprise me."

Keller, who had spent more time in the presence of aliens than either him or Wendy, was also looking thoughtful. "You know," he said slowly, "I think Tobias had heard of the Doctor."

"What do you mean?" Ortiz asked.

"I didn't make the connection before, but seeing him now, with a different face, it almost makes sense." Keller looked across at them. "There are stories," he said, "that Tobias was telling me. Ones that were the equivalent of our fairy tales, I mean."

"Which ones?" Ortiz asked, not liking Keller's tone.

"Not always the nice ones," Keller replied quietly. "There are good and bad endings in equal measure. The Doctor helped us out, but if there's even a smidgen of truth in some of those stories, and he's the one in them, then he's done his fair share of destruction."

"It was usually war." The sound of the Doctor's voice caught them all off guard, and they looked to see him standing in the doorway. Ortiz—and Wendy and Keller, to judge by the looks on their faces—couldn't help but wonder exactly how long he'd been there. "And if not war, I always gave fair warning. I never did anything unless my hand was forced. But sometimes destruction can't be avoided, and sometimes things would be worse if you didn't do anything at all." Then his serious mood dissolved and he gave them a grin and rubbed his hands together, looking for all the world like a child anticipating the gifts of Christmas morn. "But let's focus on the good things, shall we?" Sticking his head back out the door, he called, "Amy, Rory, come meet our guests!"

The pair in question entered with bright smiles that didn't quite hide the concern in their eyes. They introduced themselves, just briefly, and listened patiently as they were told in turn who everyone was, but this news didn't appear to surprise them. Ortiz couldn't help but wonder how much they already knew, how much the Doctor had told them.

It was probably more than he'd told any of _them_. From what he understood, the Doctor hadn't been exactly forthcoming last time, either. Lucas had managed to track down traces the man had left behind, encouraged by the Doctor himself, what with that old DVD he'd slipped him, but the Doctor had struck Ortiz as someone who usually kept his secrets close at hand.

His face may have changed, but that trait apparently hadn't.

Lucas had figured, afterwards, that the Doctor had known all along what was coming in _seaQuest_'s future, for all his claims that he didn't remember enough to say anything for certain. Ortiz couldn't remember if Lucas had asked outright or not, but he did know that the Doctor hadn't ever given him anything more than vague hints, if that. Now, once again, they were in a situation where the Doctor held all the cards, and their future depended on how he played them.

"If we're supposed to be dead, Doctor," Ortiz said, cutting across the polite conversation Wendy—and, to a certain extent, Keller—was trying to have with the Doctor's companions, "what happens now?" Wendy had told them what the Doctor had told her, and it wasn't enough to satisfy him.

He needed to know.

"I never said," the Doctor replied quietly, "that you were supposed to be dead. I said you were supposed to have disappeared, and you have."

"Doesn't matter if we're supposed to have disappeared or died," Ortiz argued, "if they think we're dead."

"It makes all the difference in the world," the Doctor countered. "Perhaps even all the difference in the universe, somewhere along the line." Perhaps the Doctor read the expression on Ortiz's face, because he continued, "Think about Captain Bridger's son. He disappeared. That means there's hope."

"It also means," Keller said, "that Nathan hasn't had closure. He's still grieving for Carol, and I know there are nights when he's awake and wondering what happened to Robert."

"Pain doesn't go away," the Doctor said bluntly. "Not completely. But hope tempers it. Believe me, I know that better than any of you." He sighed and sat down on a chair—since when had there been a chair there?—and suddenly looked like the oldest person in the room.

He was, of course. Ortiz knew that. But he looked so _youthful_, ordinarily, that it was hard to remember that. Now, however, some of his emotions showed on his face. Guilt. Sorrow. Weariness.

A hard way to gain wisdom.

"Doctor?" The tentative voice belonged to Amy. "I know you don't want to admit it, but they do have a point. Where are you taking them?"

The Doctor was still staring blankly at a point in the room, away from any of them, but he answered nonetheless. "To a friend's." He turned his gaze to Ortiz then and said, "You can't contact your families, or any of _seaQuest_'s crew, or anyone who might get in touch with them and tell them you're alive. For them, you'll always have disappeared. It needs to be that way, and don't ask why. It's complicated. Some things need to play out the way they've been scripted. Do you understand me?"

"Even if we're alive, our lives as we knew them are over," Keller said. "Yeah. It's better than being dead."

The Doctor smirked. "Your career, Commander Keller, was _your_ life, and it was over the minute you stepped onto that alien ship."

"Which one?" Keller asked, looking somewhat amused as well.

"Does it really matter? The second one took you away, but the first gave you the thirst for it, a stronger thirst than you ever got searching for life on Mars. Which is there, by the way, in forms different than fossilized snails. You just never found it. Which is rather a good thing, really. The ones that were left weren't exactly…. Never mind."

Ortiz, however, was still too caught up in the Doctor's earlier words to do more than pay half a mind to the banter that followed. "We can never see anyone we knew before," he said slowly. "We have to start again, without any records, without—"

"Not exactly." The Doctor's words startled Ortiz to silence.

"But Miguel raised a good point," Wendy put in. "We're the crew of the _seaQuest_, and Scott's name may not have been in the news much since he disappeared, but people know who we are, even people we don't know. We can't just be dropped off somewhere without any means to live out any life besides our own."

"I think you've all been around long enough," the Doctor said, "to realize that there are places on Earth where a person can disappear and not be found again if they want it. And not all of those places are as remote as you might think. I might drop you into different lives, but your skills will still be put to good use."

"So where are we going?" Ortiz asked, repeating the earlier question.

The Doctor's lips twitched into a smile. "Somewhere where you can heal up first, properly, and then do all the good in the world that you can do—without anyone else knowing."

* * *

><p>AN: So, how predictable am I? Anyone know where they're going? (Bearing in mind, of course, that the Doctor has many, many friends.) Also, many thanks to anyone who takes the time to review.


	3. Chapter 3

Even hours later, when he was tired enough to be more than willing to be escorted back to the sick bay, Scott Keller didn't regret asking the Doctor for a tour of his ship in the slightest. Of course, the Doctor himself had only started the tour before suddenly remembering something he'd left in one room or another and dashing off before it could, as far as Keller could gather, explode. This news hadn't seemed to particularly surprise Amy and Rory, who had easily stepped up to continue the tour.

They couldn't answer his questions about anything, but they told some pretty good stories about their adventures. And as many stories as Keller had heard since leaving Earth with Tobias, he never tired of them. _Especially_ when he could hear what had happened first hand, untainted by the retellings of time.

Of course, he couldn't figure out precisely how much the stories were embellished, but he didn't mind, really. Some of the tales had been told with such straight faces that he wasn't completely convinced that they had been embellished after all, ridiculous as they had sounded. Having spent some time outside the safety of Earth, however, he didn't have as much trouble believing everything as he might have.

The tales he'd been told, though, from Amy and Rory and Tobias, made him see what was in front of him. The Doctor had said they couldn't contact anyone but that they'd still be using their skills without being uncovered—that no one would find them, so to speak. He remembered a few of the comments the Doctor had made the first time he'd met him, and Keller was fairly certain he knew how the Doctor intended to pull it all off: time travel.

The Doctor might be dropping them back on Earth, but he hadn't said anything about dropping them back into their own time.

When he shared this theory with Wendy and Ortiz, after Amy and Rory had wandered off to check on the Doctor, neither seemed inclined to dispute it. "But it wouldn't be too far off our own time, would it?" Ortiz said. "I mean, he can't just leave us in a society we know nothing about."

"It might just be the ten year jump everyone else experienced," Wendy pointed out. "That way, if anyone did discover us, it wouldn't be suspicious."

"Except for the fact that we wouldn't have made any effort to get back to everyone else," Ortiz said.

"The Doctor didn't seem too keen on the idea of anyone discovering us," Keller said. "It could very easily be a longer jump than just ten years."

"Well, I suppose we'll just have to hope he lands where he intends to," Wendy said, evidently recalling some of Amy's stories. Her lips managed to twitch into a smile, but she was clearly still worried. Like the rest of them, she didn't know what was going to happen. She didn't know what had happened. And asking, it seemed, didn't get them answers.

Not straight ones, anyway.

"It's not our choice, anyway," Keller said. "Not like when I went with Tobias. I didn't really know what I was walking into then, either, but it was still my choice."

The Doctor chose that moment to stumble into the sick bay, a smear of grease—or something similar—across his forehead. "Sorry about earlier," he said. "Didn't mean to run off like that. Old experiment I nearly forgot about. Been a few years since I've needed to check in on it. Was the tour good?"

"It was enlightening," Wendy said.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Amy and Rory got lost, didn't they? They still haven't learned to listen to the little clues she gives them. Of course, not many of my companions ever _do_, but every once in a while one of them will be able to appreciate her." He sucked in a breath and looked at them again, more critically this time. "For having had a good tour, you seem to be a rather gloomy-looking lot."

"We'd like to know where you're taking us," Ortiz said bluntly.

"And when," Keller added.

The Doctor sighed. "I'm dropping you off in your own time," he said. "I just didn't want to tell you where because I didn't want you to argue with me. I spend enough time arguing with Amy; I don't need to argue with any of you, too."

"Why would we argue?" Wendy asked. "You rescued us." She didn't add what Keller figured she was thinking: they didn't have any choice, anyway.

The Doctor smiled. "Yes," he said, "but, that aside, our destination might seem a bit contradictory to what I said earlier. And, usually, that means you're going to be inclined to argue with me. So that's why I haven't told you."

"How long is it going to be before we arrive?" Ortiz asked.

"It won't be very long once we get underway," the Doctor said, "but we haven't left yet. I wasn't sure that you were ready. I can't guarantee that you're going to get any rest once we get there, so I thought it would be best if you got some here first."

"But how do you expect us to rest when we don't know what's going on?" Wendy asked. "When we're wondering and worrying?"

The Doctor looked indignant. "What's to worry about?" He sounded incredulous. "I've got things sorted, and I told you about what happened to the rest of your crew. And that's more than I should have, you know. If I was going to go about things properly, I would've just let you find out on your own, like everyone else. So you don't have anything to wonder about, either."

"So when you said you were dropping us off in our own time," Keller said, "you meant it? The same time we left? Not ten years in the future?"

"I meant the same time they left," the Doctor clarified, waving a hand at Wendy and Ortiz. "Why would I cheat you out of ten years like the rest of the _seaQuest_ folk? You can do a lot more good in ten years' time than you can after that time's passed. Especially these ten years. I mean, you won't be able to do much more than Lieutenant Krieg in terms of bringing down the Macronesian Alliance. Not that I expect you to. Well, not single-handedly. But, I mean, really, even if you can't stop it alone, you'll have a better chance at making your own little dent if you see it happening. Everyone else won't have that luxury. It'll be developed by the time they come back. They'll lack the understanding you have."

"What's the Macronesian Alliance?" Ortiz asked.

"That's my point," the Doctor said. "That's exactly how everyone else in your crew will feel. But not you two, nor Keller, because you'll see it happening. You'll understand. You'll know. Knowledge is invaluable." He tapped his head. "Look at me; knowledge has saved my skin more times than I can count. Well, not really, since most of the time it's my own ingenuity, but you get the idea. You need the basis that knowledge gives you to be able to make the decisions you need to make and do what you need to do."

"What are you expecting us to do?" Keller asked.

"I expect you to help," the Doctor said simply. "What else? I expect you to do what you can. To use your skills to help others because you can, without always expecting something in return."

Keller smirked. "You want us to be nice."

"I want you to be _very_ nice. And helpful. I can't force you to it, of course, but I have the feeling your conscience will do that for me. Once you get a better idea of what's really happening, which I expect you'll get once you arrive. But you're not leaving yet, so get some rest." The Doctor gave them all a stern look. "I'll check on you later, and if you're all rested up, then we can leave. And if you're not, we're staying right here."

Wendy chuckled. "You're prescribing bed rest?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes. Bed rest. Exactly. Doctor's orders. I'll be in the console room if you need me. The TARDIS will make sure you get there without getting lost." Giving them a little wave, he turned heel and headed back out of the sick bay.

"Bed rest," Ortiz repeated. "He won't take us anywhere until we get some rest."

"Rest does help with healing," Wendy pointed out.

"I'm sure it does," Keller said. "But I'm beat, anyway, even if you two aren't. I could probably use the rest." He lay down on his bed then, proving his point. "Besides, if we aren't going to go anywhere until we've had some rest, then we might as well rest."

A glance at Ortiz confirmed Keller's suspicion that he, at least, wanted to argue, but in the end, Ortiz just shook his head and lay down, too. Wendy did the same, and in no time, the three of them were staring up at the ceiling, listening to the soft hum of the ship, and trying to keep from worrying.

* * *

><p>It was some time later that Amy wandered into the console room, trailed by Rory. The Doctor didn't look up when they joined him around the console. He was peering at something on the screen and didn't even look their way until Amy coughed. Twice.<p>

"Good tour?" the Doctor asked, glancing at them before looking back at the screen.

Amy shrugged. "Still haven't found the swimming pool. I'm not convinced it's still in the library. And you've got something on your forehead, you know."

"What?" The Doctor clapped a hand to his brow, then pulled his fingers away, rubbing them together as he did so. He frowned, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket with his clean hand, and wiped his fingers and forehead free of the offending substance. "Brillox," he said at Amy's questioning look. "Use it as a lubricant. Nasty to get out of clothes, though."

"Like grease?" Rory asked, looking at it.

"It's nothing like grease," the Doctor said dismissively. "It's much better than grease."

Amy raised an eyebrow, crossed her arms, and fixed him with a look. "Looks like grease," she said.

"It's not grease," the Doctor insisted. "I mean, sure, it _looks_ like grease, and it's _used_ like grease, and it _smells_ like grease, but it's not grease."

"Right."

"Okay, _fine_, it's _essentially_ grease. Just not."

"It's grease, isn't it?" Rory said, looking at Amy.

She nodded. "Definitely." After a moment of the Doctor's grumbling, she said, "So where are we going?"

"Oh, you're starting that, too, are you?"

"It's a fair question," Rory pointed out.

"The answer's not going to mean anything to you," the Doctor warned.

Amy leaned against the railing. "So? It's still an answer."

The Doctor sighed. "I'm taking them to someone who can help. Dr. Kristin Westphalen."

"And who's she? Someone like us?"

"Someone like them," the Doctor corrected. "Dr. Wendy Smith took over her position as _seaQuest_'s chief medical officer. Dr. Westphalen chose to help her daughter with her exploits rather than continue on with _seaQuest_, and she's been doing just as much good. They help people, working under the radar, and Wendy, Ortiz, and Keller can help them help those people, too."

Amy didn't need to look at Rory to know he was just as confused as she was. "I thought you said they couldn't contact any of _seaQuest_'s crew," he said.

"Technically, Dr. Westphalen's not crew anymore," the Doctor said. "But they trust her, or at least Ortiz and Keller do, and Wendy won't have any reason not to, once she meets her. If she hasn't already, given that they're in the same field. Not to mention, _I_ trust her. She's got good judgement, and she can keep a secret. She'll keep theirs once I explain it, and I doubt she'll refuse to help. That's not exactly in her nature."

"So if they know her, why not tell them she's the friend you mentioned?" Amy asked.

"Because of what you, Rory, just said," the Doctor explained. "She's crew."

"But you just said she wasn't," Rory said slowly.

"Well, she isn't. Not anymore. But she was. And that's as much a problem as it is a good thing if they know ahead of time, you see? Because if _she_ can know where they are and that they're still alive, why can't anyone else? They'll argue with me. They'll protest. Or, worse, they won't _listen_ to me, and they'll try to contact the rest of the _seaQuest_ crew when they finally turn up on Earth. And that's not supposed to happen."

"Well, what's it matter?" Amy said. "It's not like you haven't changed things before. So what if they contact anyone else?"

"If they contact anyone else," the Doctor replied, "then things may not go as they should, and, unfortunately, they have to go as they should."

"You just plucked them off a planet before they could die," Amy said, straightening up now, "and that's changing things, isn't it? You said so yourself. You had to nab them before they got killed. And you did. That's changing things. You're just covering it up by not letting them talk to anyone else, by having the people they _do_ talk to keep it a secret. So what if they contact the crew and make _them_ promise to keep it a secret, too? What's the difference?"

"Reaction," the Doctor said immediately. "Contact would mean knowledge, knowledge they're not supposed to have, knowledge that would influence how they make their decisions. Everyone else is acting under the assumption that they're dead, killed in the attack or wounded too badly to be able to recover from the meditative coma the rest of the crew fell into, thanks to the Hyperion rebels. Even Captain Bridger, who'll come out of it all with the knowledge of what happened while everyone else has their memories modified, won't know exactly what happened. He'll just know they weren't there, and he'll be left to make his own assumptions. And he'll be _sharing_ those assumptions when everyone finally gets together and they realize who's missing."

Amy pursed her lips, but she doubted she could argue with the Doctor on this one. She knew as well as anyone that a person's absence could influence someone's decisions as much as a person's presence. Instead, she settled on asking another question. "So how come this Dr. Westphalen's decisions won't be affected in the same way?"

"Oh, they will be," the Doctor said.

"And why isn't _that_ a problem, then?"

"Scale," was the reply. "Kristin and Cynthia and everyone else in their group work, as I said, under the radar. For their own safety, not a lot of people know what they're doing. Well, a number of people know what they're doing, but not a lot of people know that they're the ones doing it."

"So they're small and unimportant, so it doesn't matter that their decisions might be influenced by the fact that three people are alive instead of dead?"

The Doctor shook his head. "They're small, yes, but they're still very important. Even so, the decisions they're making aren't going to be as widely known as any made on _seaQuest_, once she returns to Earth's oceans again. I mean, her exploits are still in your future, but she will become the most important vessel in the water in her time. And when she's gone, the structure of the UEO won't be as stable as it used to be, and Macronesia will rise up and—"

"Okay, sorry, but hold on," Rory said, holding up his hands. "What's the UEO? And where's Macronesia?"

"United Earth Oceans organization," the Doctor said, "and you'll find out, once it exists. Unfortunately. Now, my point is, it doesn't matter if Kristin Westphalen's decisions are affected, not like it matters if, say, Lucas Wolenczak's decisions are affected."

"Let me guess," Amy said dryly. "This is something only you can determine because you have some great knowledge that we don't?"

The Doctor's smug look told her he completely missed her sarcasm. "Actually, yes," he said, straightening his stupid bowtie again. Rory, who had noticed her dislike of them, had once suggested buying a truly hideous one for the Doctor so he would know that bowties weren't, as he thought, cool, but Amy hadn't needed to think twice before she'd shot that idea down. Knowing the Doctor, he wouldn't notice how horrible it looked and would wear it, and that would just make things worse.

She'd been in his wardrobe room. If he'd ever worn _half_ of the things in there, he was probably way beyond any fashion help she could give him. Not that that would stop her from trying as long as she travelled with him, even if she could recognize a futile effort when she saw one.

It was Rory who eventually continued the conversation, asking, "So, when are we going, then? I mean, we could've been there hours ago."

"Technically, we still can," the Doctor said, "but it's best not to. It'd be bright daylight there then, and I don't want to attract any more attention than we have to."

"I meant hours ago for us."

"Well, we couldn't have gone a few hours ago," the Doctor said, as if this was an incredibly simple concept that he couldn't believe Rory had missed. "They still needed to rest, and to process some of the shock of it all. I wasn't about to show up on Dr. Westphalen's doorstep with them in that state. How would you like it if I dropped three patients on you when they were no better than this lot was when we got them off Hyperion?"

"Well, I—"

"Precisely my point," the Doctor said. "We're not going to leave for a while yet, so you might as well make yourself comfortable. Or go find the swimming pool. Well, the main library, because the swimming pool is _in_ the main library."

"I've been in the main library," Amy protested.

"Then you weren't in the right section," the Doctor said. "So, go along. Shoo. Go off for an hour or two."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Fine. Come on, Rory." So long as they knew they weren't going to be thrown headlong into an adventure, they might as well make the best of it. This much free time on the TARDIS was rather uncommon, and knowing they weren't going to be tossed around by any sudden movements anytime soon was a luxury in itself.

* * *

><p>When Amy and Rory had wandered off again, the Doctor returned his attention to the screen. He'd finally decided the best time to drop his passengers off: after <em>seaQuest<em>'s disappearance had been made public, after even the wildest of theories had been made, but before anyone had really given up hope of her turning up again. It wouldn't be _exactly_ right after her disappearance like he'd told the others, but the loss of a few months was better than the loss of ten years.

The Doctor wondered, just a bit, whether he should try to find a way to give Dr. Westphalen warning of what he had planned. After all, he was just acting on assumptions. They were _good_ assumptions, because they were his, but they were still just assumptions. He didn't know for certain that she'd be equipped to take on three more patients, even if those patients would, upon being discharged from her care, be able to help her and Cynthia and the rest of them with everything they were doing.

It wasn't just smuggling children out from under the noses of regimes who wanted them dead, but that had never been all it had been anyway. If there was something wrong, something that everyone else either didn't know about or was choosing to ignore, and they could do something to temper it, they would. The trick was to do it without anyone unpleasant finding out and compromising their success—or their lives, depending on who exactly was the one to discover them—and they were usually pretty good at that. From what he could gather, anyway. He preferred to believe that they were good at not being discovered as opposed to good at silencing those who did discover them.

Still. He supposed he shouldn't really be one to judge them either way. He who casts the first stone and all that. As Keller had told Wendy and Ortiz earlier, he had a dark enough past himself, even if he did do what he did for the right reasons. Well, the right reasons in _his_ opinion. He had no doubt some people would argue with him on that. Even his own people hadn't agreed with his decisions. That's why he was where he was now.

It might even be part of the reason why he was still alive and they weren't. It had been his idea, even if it had been their decision to carry it out. A crazy scheme that might not even work, not necessarily, and one that carried such a great cost…. But there had been no other option, and even if there had been, he wasn't sure, now, that they would have taken it. The Time Lords in the last days of the War were not the ones he wanted to remember, especially now that he knew what they had planned, what they had tried to do, what they had tried to exchange for their return.

It had all happened a lifetime ago, or a few lifetimes ago, but it still seemed so…recent.

Raw.

It was no wonder Wendy and Ortiz and Keller were slow to trust him now. Really trust him, that is. Unquestioningly. War, and not their own, had torn them from everything they'd known. It had threatened to end their lives and, in a way, it had. They had to start fresh. Well, mostly. But sooner or later, they wouldn't be able to ignore the grief.

They were lucky to be alive, yes. But he'd torn them away from family and friends, forbidden contact and already set up a fair number of things to ensure that. Not to mention that, by the time the rest of the _seaQuest_ crew arrived back on Earth, virtually unchanged in ten years' time—because, for them, it wouldn't really have _been_ ten years, exactly—they would be different. And whatever pain they had managed to push away would come back, and they'd have to face it again.

They might, in their anger, blame him, just because he was someone to blame, but he thought not. Still, all he could really hope was that, by then, they'd done enough good to realize his intention, to realize that things didn't have to be over. It wasn't really their fault, after all, that they'd ended up where they had. It had been a series of connections, of decisions, and more than a few manipulations, that had let things play out as they had. A life was too high a price to pay for something that hadn't been intended, in his opinion. He was just fortunate that he was able to interfere here, even if Lucas would never know, because he wouldn't be able to do anything next time.

Besides, that was just more proof that the Good Samaritan doesn't need to be in the spotlight; quite a lot of them do their good deeds unbeknownst to anyone else. It would be simple enough for his three extra passengers to slip into that group.

No matter. He couldn't do much more now. Once they got a bit of rest, he'd drop them off. Amy and Rory would probably turn up before the others did, asking more questions or grumbling about still not being able to find the swimming pool or something like that. But if he was going to be answering their questions, he'd rather not do it when the others could listen in; that bordered too close on knowing one's own particular future, and that was never a good burden to bear.

Until then, however, the most he could do was wait.

* * *

><p>AN: See? Dr. Kristin Westphalen. I'm probably much more predictable than I'm given credit for. *grins* Thanks to everyone who reviews.


	4. Chapter 4

Dr. Kristin Westphalen was quite relieved when she was finally able to sit down and put her feet up. She'd never admit that to Cynthia, however. Her daughter had been the one to insist she finally go home rather than stay at the abandoned church that served as their current recovery and deployment centre. Given the choice, Kristin would have stayed behind. Her medical knowledge was a sight better than her daughter's, after all. But none of the refugees they'd smuggled out this time had had any dire medical conditions, and they were about ready to let the last of this most recent group move on.

The Westphalen home, after all, was only a temporary safe house, and they could only ever keep a few people with them without arousing suspicion. The people they helped might not be hunted in America as they would be in their own country, but they couldn't keep everyone under their roof while waiting for their refugee status to come through. It could take years. That was why their home, equipped as it was with various pieces of medical equipment, was reserved for those who needed constant medical care.

With no one requiring such care, it was currently empty, and blissfully quiet.

She ought to be planning out the details of their next mission, but her exhaustion was as much mental as physical. Besides, Cynthia knew more about that than she did. And it had been far too long since she'd had the luxury to lose herself in a good book. That was, though rather selfish, what she had planned now.

It did not take Kristin long, however, to realize that she wouldn't be able to read in peace. Now that she finally had a moment of quiet, her mind kept wandering back to words she'd read scarcely two days ago. Those words had been in the paper rather than in a book, but she could see them more clearly than the words on the book's pages in front of her. Closing her eyes didn't do any good, either. She could see the story in her mind's eye, and she couldn't forget its heart-wrenching content.

_SeaQuest_, and every member of her crew on board, was missing.

The UEO hadn't wanted to disclose the information, but it had gotten out. There had been rumours before, when _seaQuest_ hadn't turned up at scenes she'd normally be called to, but the UEO had made its excuses, fabricating reasons and even phoney transmissions. Kristin had no doubt the UEO officials had used Nathan Bridger's idea for that last one, seeing as he'd suggested a similar tactic the time Lucas and a number of UEO officials had been effectively kidnapped at a summit meeting by none other than their own secretary general. It had been Bridger's idea to show a video of them touring _seaQuest_ to placate the press while they worked out what had happened. It had worked.

But now, to have a similar tactic pulled on them and then to have it fail, to know it had all been false…. That felt terrible. The UEO had created a patchwork of Bridger's words, stringing them together into new sentences to create a speech he'd supposedly given. She'd never had the chance to see it when it had been aired—she'd been pulling a double shift looking after their charges—but Cynthia had caught a glimpse of it, and she'd passed on the message, and she'd….

She'd believed it. She hadn't thought something was wrong. It was silly. Non-scientific. Utterly foolish. But she'd thought that if something terrible had happened to the people aboard _seaQuest_, many of whom she'd served with on the ship's first tour, she'd be able to tell, somehow. That she'd know. And she hadn't.

They were missing, and all too often, missing meant dead. Especially when it had been months since the last true record of _seaQuest_'s appearance. If the UEO knew what had happened, they hadn't release it. And if they didn't release it, it wasn't something that shed a favourable light on their organization. Instead, they would just cover up every trace so effectively that no one would be able to piece together what was surely a terrible tragedy.

Which meant that people like her would never know what had happened.

_Missing_.

She'd been a fool to think she could imagine the ache Nathan felt when he thought about his son, Robert. She'd thought it was the same ache she felt when she thought about her brother, James. But murdered, she'd realized, was a different ache than missing.

And, being fresh, this was infinitely more painful.

Perhaps she should have signed on for _seaQuest_'s second tour. She might have been able to help. But her successor, she knew, was also more than qualified for the job, even if she was younger. And, besides, Kristin knew she'd done a world of good by helping Cynthia. But she felt…. Perhaps it was guilt, because she could have been there, in the same situation as the _seaQuest_ crew, and she wasn't. Or perhaps it was simply worry. Concern, apprehension, sorrow….

Grief.

Reading was no good. She'd never be able to read in this state. She shouldn't have listened to Cynthia. She should have stayed. She could have helped. Working would have kept her mind from this.

"And delaying it further would only make it worse," Kristin admitted to herself, but she put the book aside nonetheless. She didn't get up, however; she simply buried her head in her hands and wished she had no reason to grieve.

Oh, if Cynthia walked in now, she'd be in for a lecture. Kristin could hear it. _"You can't blame yourself, Mom. You couldn't have done anything. And think of all you're doing here. Being lost with the rest of them wouldn't help anyone, least of all them. So don't worry. We'll figure it out. We'll find out what happened. We'll help make it right. I promise."_

A lecture, and a hug, and, more likely than not, a shoulder for the tears that she could now barely hold back.

How could _seaQuest_ be gone? Even if she'd had to be sacrificed again, Nathan would've at least gotten _some_ of the crew off the ship if at all possible. And if he hadn't, then that meant…that meant…. There hadn't been time, or they hadn't had the means.

Something truly terrible had happened.

She should have kept up her correspondence with the crew and former crew members. They'd been such a tight-knit group, and she'd genuinely enjoyed their friendship. But Cynthia had warned her of the dangers of what she was doing now, how suspicion might fall on them and what they might face if they were suspected. It wasn't that someone would turn them in, even if they did know full well that what Kristin was doing now was perfectly illegal, but rather that someone else might find a suspicious sentence in an innocent letter when they were looking for someone to blame. And some of the people, Cynthia had said, knew her face, if not her name. She wasn't sure how long it would take them to place it.

That was why they had to do what they could before that happened, before Cynthia was forced to stop for a time, until things quieted down.

And Kristin was _not_ going to sit back and do something else when she _knew_ the danger her daughter was getting herself into.

"_You worry too much, Mom. I can take care of myself."_

Kristin might have been more able to believe that if she hadn't had to watch her daughter nearly die, if she hadn't had to nurse her back to a more stable condition, if she hadn't seen the dangers Cynthia walked into for herself. Cynthia might surround herself with people who would look after her as she would for them, yes, but danger was danger. The risks were higher than Kristin liked, but the reward—the knowledge that they were saving lives, that they were indeed making a difference—was what mattered in the end. That was why Cynthia had found herself in this business, and it was why Kristin had followed.

It was the pounding on the door that finally dragged her back to herself. Kristin got to her feet, shoving her thoughts aside and praying that this visit would not mark the end of their operation. There was always the chance that someone had discovered them. That was why they kept moving, never used their house as a base except in the most dire of circumstances. That was why they had to watch their words, mask their emotions, keep up a façade of normalcy when indeed they were doing nothing of the sort.

She opened the door just as the man had his fist up, poised for another volley of pounding. He was young, and a bit oddly dressed for his age, and she'd never laid eyes on the likes of him before. She could see a few people behind him, but she didn't look at them quite yet. She couldn't. She needed to figure out what this meant first.

"Yes?" she finally asked.

The man was grinning at her. "Dr. Kristin Westphalen!" he crowed, reaching out to grab her hand and give it a vigorous shake. "Lovely to see you again. You've been keeping well, I assume?" Without giving her a chance to respond, the man continued, "I'm the Doctor; remember me? I brought you a few strays. Not Amy and Rory—they're mine—but I think you might recognize the other three."

Kristin caught her breath as the man stepped aside, trying to process everything she'd just heard and everything she could now see.

Scott Keller. Miguel Ortiz. And, though it had been a very long time since she'd run into her, Wendy Smith. The last two still wore their _seaQuest_ uniforms, and all three looked as stunned to see her as she was to see them. A bit bedraggled, admittedly, and clearly tired, and a bit bruised—she could even see that from here—but undeniably alive and relatively well.

Her eyes swept over the two unfamiliar people in the group and back to the first man. The Doctor. _The Doctor_. He looked utterly different from the last time she'd seen him, but somehow, she didn't doubt for a moment that it truly was him. It wasn't just everything Lucas had found out; it was more than that, somehow.

The impossible happening again, perhaps. Three missing people turning up on her doorstep.

But what about everyone else? Nathan and Lucas and—

"Bit much to take in, I suppose, considering it's short notice," the Doctor said. "Well, considering it's no notice, actually. But do you mind if we come in? It might be a bit of a lengthy explanation."

"Oh, no, of course," Kristin opened the door wider, allowing them entrance, still trying to pull herself from her shocked state.

"Guess you didn't expect to see us again so soon, did you?" Ortiz murmured as he passed her. She managed a weak smile in response, still feeling rather bewildered.

What had happened to _seaQuest_? Where was everyone else?

When everyone was settled, she offered to make tea, but the woman, Amy, stood up and said she and Rory could do it. "It sounds like you guys need a bit of time to sort things out by yourselves," she said. "We'll find what we need; don't worry."

As soon as Amy and Rory were gone, the Doctor started to speak again. "Right," he said. "First things first. Dr. Westphalen, you _do_ have the facilities to take on a few house guests, don't you? They'll need a bit of medical treatment, I'm afraid. I could only take care of a few things in the time I had."

"We'll be fine," Wendy put in, shooting the Doctor a pointed look. "It's more getting over the shock than anything else. Not much more than scrapes and bruises otherwise."

"Don't listen to her," the Doctor said. "She's still confused. They need plenty of rest for at _least_ a week, and—"

"I'll determine that for myself, Doctor," Kristin interrupted gently. "And of course they may stay. But what happened?"

"Some of the more extraordinary things I'd warned Captain Bridger that you lot might run into," the Doctor said.

Keller laughed and shook his head, clearly having heard more of _seaQuest_'s recent exploits from Ortiz and Wendy than she had from the UEO releases. "Kristin, have you heard of Professor Tobias LeConte?"

The name did ring a bell, and Kristin admitted it. "Didn't he disappear a while ago?" she asked.

Keller nodded. "I disappeared with him. He's an alien, from Hyperion, and we went off in search of new worlds." He smiled at her shock. "It was a while later that everyone else got involved," he said, nodding at Wendy and Ortiz.

"There was a war on Hyperion," Wendy put in. "We were recruited to fight."

Kristin's mouth went dry. "And…everyone else?" she choked out.

"They're not the survivors," the Doctor said, waving a hand at three he'd brought with him. "Everyone else is alive, Kristin Westphalen, and they'll be fine. You just won't hear anything of them for a very long time, because they're not here yet. I can't really tell you much more than that."

"Then what—?"

"We are the dead," Ortiz said bluntly, evidently seeing her confusion. "Or presumed dead, at least. Missing. According to him—" and here he jerked his thumb at the Doctor "—we never turned up with everyone else."

"I made a promise to Lucas last time I spoke with him," the Doctor said quietly. "I was trying to fulfill it. But to finish that, to really fulfill it and leave it behind me, I'm going to need your help."

"And that's why you're here?"

"That's why I'm here," the Doctor agreed. "Those three are supposed to have dropped off the records. I was hoping you'd help me keep it that way. Besides," he added, leaning back in his chair, "I thought you and your daughter could always use a bit of help."

"We aren't allowed to contact anyone we know," Wendy said softly. "We have no means of starting again without your help."

"They'll have to work under the radar," the Doctor clarified, "so I thought this would work out perfectly. You're trying to keep off the radar, they _need_ to keep off the radar, and when can you not use a bit of help? Besides, you know they're skilled. You've worked with them. Well, some of them. But you don't need to worry about lack of trust or anything like that, so it shouldn't be too hard to put them to work when they're up to it."

It was overwhelming. _SeaQuest_ had been pulled off to another world, an alien planet, and her entire crew, save the people who sat in front of her now, wouldn't return for who knew how long. _But they're alive_.

And Wendy, Ortiz, and Keller…weren't supposed to be.

"You rescued them," Kristin said. "Your promise to Lucas—it was to save them?"

"It was to try to protect his family," the Doctor answered, "if they were in danger because of circumstances beyond their control, circumstances that had roots in that time I spent with you on _seaQuest_. I promised that if that happened, I would interfere if circumstances allowed me to, because everything that had happened wasn't their fault."

"Nor was it really yours," Kristin pointed out.

The Doctor shrugged. "But it _was_ my jurisdiction, as Lucas put it, and he was holding me to a rather lengthy record of interferences."

"Well, I can't say I'm sorry he did that," Ortiz said. "Although you _could_ have told us where we were going."

The Doctor sighed. "I didn't want you to argue with me," he said testily. "If I'd told you we were coming here, you would've argued that that was a complete contradiction of my earlier terms about contacting people you knew. But it's _not_, and I'd rather not explain that five times before you lot finally understand me."

"We wouldn't have argued," Wendy said gently. "We wouldn't have had a basis for our argument. We simply wouldn't have worried."

The Doctor still looked a bit disgruntled. "Yes, well, you could at least have given me a bit of credit, you know. I wasn't going to drop you off with a complete stranger. You'd never have gone along with it, and I'd've been stuck with you."

Kristin's lips twitched into a smile. "Don't go getting into that argument on my account," she said. "You're here now, and you'll be staying here. That's what matters."

"And to everyone else, they'll have disappeared," the Doctor said, sounding cheerful again. "Right. Well, I'll go see how Amy and Rory are getting along with that tea, and you four can hammer out the details." And without waiting any further, he jumped out of the chair and headed off to the kitchen.

It was still hard to keep the tears from coming, Kristin found, though they would be tears of relief rather than ones of grief. "Miguel," she started, "you remember my daughter, Cynthia, don't you?"

Ortiz looked surprised. "Of course," he said. "Do you think I'd forget after what we went through? We nearly—" He broke off. "That's what you're doing now," he said, realization dawning. "That's what the Doctor meant."

"That is what we're doing," Kristin agreed, "among other things, ones just as illicit and just as necessary." For the benefit of the others, she added, "On _seaQuest_'s first tour, we received a call to apprehend emerald smugglers." She paused, then said, "It turned out to be a submarine full of children. Political refugees. They were led by my daughter and an ally who had barely survived his own childhood in the same circumstances, and they were doing all they could to help the children escape certain death."

"We'd be happy to help," Wendy said, reaching over to squeeze her hand, "however we can and as soon as we can. Do you have people who need care now? I'm not so bad myself that I can't help someone who's in worse shape than I am."

Kristin smiled. "I appreciate the offer," she said, "but I think you'd best rest. I was sent home for the same, and I hardly think you're in better shape than I am."

Wendy chuckled. "I suppose not. But I'd like to join you when you return."

"If you're still up to it, I'm sure Cynthia would appreciate another pair of hands." Kristin eyed the younger woman critically. "But you may want to be careful or she'll see you in a makeshift bed with the rest of them."

This brought a laugh. "I'll bear that in mind," Wendy agreed. "I won't overdo it."

Kristin explained a bit more about what she and Cynthia were doing and got a few more details out of the others about what had happened. It seemed like quite a time had passed before the Doctor, Amy, and Rory came back with the tea, but it was still hot and not overly strong, and she had to wonder whether Amy and Rory had even started boiling the kettle before the Doctor had joined them. The teabags were just in the cupboard above the stove; surely it hadn't taken them that long to find them?

More likely, Kristin thought as everyone settled down again, this was the second pot, and the Doctor had let them visit while the first one grew cold.

"Good conversation?" Amy asked as she sipped her own tea. "I hope we weren't interrupting anything important."

"Oh, no," Kristin assured her. "Just a few old friends catching up on conversation that's long overdue."

"So you're all agreed, then?" the Doctor asked. "You sorted out all the nitty gritty details?"

"Not quite," Kristin said, "but they'll come." She glanced at Amy and Rory before looking back at the Doctor. "And what have you been up to, pray tell? I see you're not travelling alone anymore."

"Nope," the Doctor said. "Now I'm travelling with friends. Other than that, not much is new. Nothing interesting."

"_Nothing interesting_?" Rory repeated incredulously. "After all we've been through?"

"Standard stuff," the Doctor said dismissively. But Kristin didn't miss the slight shake of his head when he caught Amy's eye, and she knew there was something that they weren't being told.

She supposed she shouldn't expect much else. The Doctor never had told her—or anyone, as far as she could gather—everything. And perhaps, if it didn't directly concern her, she was better off not knowing. She had had her fair share of surprises already. Besides, she had no doubt that the Doctor would be able to sort out whatever trouble was brewing this time. He'd changed since she'd last seen him, but at his heart, he was still the same person.

But time changed everyone, even if it was only slightly, and the Doctor was no different. Kristin had no idea how long it had been, but she didn't think it could be too terribly long. From what she'd gathered from Lucas's research, the Doctor rarely called on people he'd travelled with after he'd left them behind. That he had remembered her when he'd needed her, someone he'd only worked with once, told her it couldn't have been that long. Long enough, no doubt, but not too long.

Kristin couldn't suppress a small smile at that thought. It was a concept that wouldn't have made any sense when she'd first met the Doctor, given how skewed time had become. Recollections of when past events had occurred had shifted, and it had taken the Doctor to sort it all out. Given the circumstances of the situation as she had understood it, they might have gotten off all right without the Doctor's help—providing they docked for a few days quickly enough—but the effects may have caused more lasting damage. Or, Kristin thought wryly, perhaps the unusual events spawned by their encounter with a fragment of time would have been more frequent or severe.

Given the little she'd heard from Keller, Wendy, and Ortiz, they were lucky the Doctor had run into them when he had.

But maybe it was over now. Maybe the effect of being saturated in time had worn off. She couldn't recall anyone saying that the Doctor had said that such a thing would happen, but it was reasonable. If those spores, as the Doctor had called them, were dispersed with each unusual event, then the frequency of the events they attracted should lessen until an equilibrium was reached again.

Of course, by that thinking, it might very well take some time before anyone who had been aboard _seaQuest_ in her first tour to reach such an equilibrium. The initial reaction time, when the Doctor had crystallized the excess spores on _seaQuest_, had been quick. But Kristin had run enough experiments in her lifetime to know that it could take years for equilibrium to be reached. A few years had passed, and while her life had certainly not been as extraordinary as the fare of _seaQuest_'s crew, she couldn't be certain that everything was over, that the equilibrium had already been reached. She didn't have enough information to make that assumption.

And she rather thought now was not the best time to ask.

She wouldn't get another chance, she knew. Well, it would be unlikely, at any rate. But she wasn't certain the Doctor would answer her. He'd told her that the rest of the _seaQuest_ crew was alive. Unless he had simply meant the ones she knew? Surely not, but…. It didn't bear thinking about. He'd told Wendy about the same, from the sounds of it, and added that they would all turn up in ten years.

Ten years was an awfully long time to wait. A lot could happen in ten years. But, ten years or not, it meant that somehow, impossibly, _seaQuest_ would return. And if she returned to the oceans, then perhaps all the fear-mongering that had been going on recently, which would undoubtedly continue for quite some time, would finally be silenced. _SeaQuest_ may just be a ship, but her presence could temper disaster. People thought twice about doing something when they knew _seaQuest_ might turn up.

Now that she was gone and would be for at least ten years, who knew what shape the world would take?

Well, whatever shape that was, she could at least take part in shaping it, shaving off a few undesirable rough edges. They all could. And, if they did their work well enough, no one would ever know the difference unless they looked for it.

Right now, however, she had company, company she was fairly certain she'd never see again. She was going to make the best of it. Tea and idle conversation, neatly avoiding all those topics they couldn't very well talk openly about, was enjoyable, yes. And she meant to make the most of it.

But perhaps something additional was required, given that she could see how the Doctor's friends, Amy and Rory, still looked a bit uncomfortable, out of place. Kristin took another sip of her tea before deciding that the best way to remedy that was to go back to one of the many things she'd learned from Nathan Bridger: if you need to take your mind off something, play a game. In his case, the game of choice had been poker. Now, since she'd sworn never to play another game of chess, hers was the same. "Do you have time to play a few rounds of poker before you leave?" she asked. It wouldn't break up their visiting—she doubted anyone here was quite that serious about the game—and it would help to draw everyone together before they had to part ways.

For a second or two, she was the recipient of surprised faces. Then the Doctor burst out laughing, and smiles and chuckles came from everyone else, including her. "We'd love to," he said, earning surprised looks from Amy and Rory. Perhaps in response to their shock, he added, quietly, "I think we could all use a bit of a break." A bit louder, he added, "After all, a bit of fun's an excellent remedy for whatever ails you, isn't it?"

Kristin smiled. "Precisely." It wasn't a cure, but it was a suitable distraction, and it would make everyone more comfortable.

And since they didn't know what the future would hold, sometimes making people more comfortable, helping them adjust to a new life, was the best they could do.

* * *

><p>AN: And that's it, I'm afraid. I do hope everyone found it enjoyable. Many thanks to darkin520, Questfan, and Earle Foster for reviewing.


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